


Flesh Wound

by PallasPerilous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Military, Angels are Dicks, Armor, Castiel (Supernatural) Whump, Ficlet, Gen, He Thinks He's People, Medical Examination, Nurse Meg Masters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 18:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16728291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PallasPerilous/pseuds/PallasPerilous
Summary: The sore extends across the top of what would be called their right shoulder. The point of greatest friction, where the pile of glinting armor bears its full weight down on the joint.The wound is shallow, irregular, and the edges have begun to puff with infection. It is a weeping sore, though it’s unclear whether the thin, clear fluid that has rendered the underpadding sticky and (impressively) foul-smelling is lymph, or pus.Neither of which their corporeal construct is meant to produce.





	Flesh Wound

The sore extends across the top of what would be called their right shoulder. The point of greatest friction, where the pile of glinting armor bears its full weight down on the joint. The wound is shallow, irregular, and the edges have begun to puff with infection. It is a _weeping sore_ , though it’s unclear whether the thin, clear fluid that has rendered the underpadding sticky and (impressively) foul-smelling is lymph, or pus.

Neither of which their corporeal construct is meant to produce.

The orderly snorts in distaste and then tosses aside the shoulderpiece with easy contempt, as if it were an empty can. (It weighs 82.4 kilos, in this environment.)

“There,” they say to the nurse. “I’m going back to the ward. Call your own orderlies if you need anything else.” Then leaves the examination partition, sweeping out without further acknowledgement.

The soldier feels a touch of what would be called shame.

“He’s a dick,” the nurse says, as she yanks the curtain closed. _She_ , because she is a human and dressed in the acknowledged manner. The garrison’s proper medic immediately recused themself upon the mere description of the wound, and had her fetched from the mortal quarter.

The soldier frowns. “They.” (And silently completes the sentence: … _are a dick._ )

The nurse uncaps a plastic bottle, and the room instantly fills with the astringent stink of rubbing alcohol. “That one’s such a dick that they’re an honorary _he_.”

This is unspeakably offensive, but they are sitting in an exam stall for humans, being examined by a human, for the foolish achievement of manifesting a human wound, so reporting it would be beyond pointless.

She rips open a packet of gauze and soaks the edge of it with the alcohol, then contemplates the wound.

“Wow. That’s a real pretty one,” she says. “Good for you.” She dabs at the shiniest edge of the wound, working her way towards the swollen section.

The soldier glowers. “It is _not_ good for me. It interferes with my duties.”

She narrows her eyes at them and lifts the gauze away. “How? The smell?”

They hesitate, pressing their lips together and averting their gaze to the glinting pauldron on the floor. This is a piece of gestural language they acquired from Sergeant Vallejo, who is dead.

The nurse lowers her voice. “Does it _hurt?_ ”

This is the point where Vallejo would have rubbed a hand across his jaw and mouth, but the soldier never quite nailed down the social utility of that part, so felt uncomfortable adopting it. “…I believe that’s what I’m experiencing. Yes.”

“Is it _actual_ pain, or it is just something you suppose _might_ be pain?”

They bristle. “I have no way to assess that.”

She dunks the gauze down on the rawest edge of the wound, and suddenly they are engaging in a sequence of involuntary behaviors: a flinch, a wince, a small vocalization.

This is more disturbing than the wound itself, and more disturbing than the original sensation, which they were able to ignore, at intervals. This is a violation from within.

The nurse’s face is an instructional diagram depicting “surprise”. “Whoa. Yeah, I’d say let’s mark that down as _actual_ pain.” She disposes of the gauze and opens a new packet. “Okay. I’m going to clean the rest of it out, but I’ll be a little more gentle. Might sting a bit, but I promise I won’t jump you this time.”

The sensation that they can now classify as _stinging_ occurs, but thankfully does not trigger anything else. Though maybe the initial cascade has simply put them on their guard. They decline the opportunity to explore _stinging_ and instead consider the possible result of succumbing to such a sequence while in the field.

The parameters are too broad to produce any statistically meaningful scenarios, although they reach disturbing scales of consequence.

A tap on their breastplate returns them to situational awareness. “You can relax now,” the nurse says, folding her arms. She has already discarded the gauze.

The soldier looks at the wound, which now smells of nothing but the swiftly evaporating alcohol. “You’ll bandage it?” they ask. “Apply a numbing agent and disinfectant?” They have witnessed a certain amount ofminor human wound care during their time in the mixed regiment. Human injuries not requiring the energies of a garrison medic of even the full attention of a human medical corpsman.

They themself were tempted, on occasion, to lay on hands (what would be called hands), but that is only authorized in cases of mortal injury in the lasting absence of a garrison medic. They have all been informed, in unsettling detail, the degree of longlasting, unintentional harm that can be inflicted on a human by a soldier untrained in anatomy.Images of limbs with a hideous excess of joints, layers of discolored skin advancing over critical orifices, abdomens distended with tumorous masses of kidney.

The nurse does not respond. She stares at them, and they wonder whether they’ve missed a social cue, in their worry and distraction. After a moment, she sighs.

“Here’s the thing. I cleaned it off for you so it’d stop stinking. I know you guys – ” (she catches herself this time) “I know you _folks_ are sensitive to…biological smells.”

“Less _sensitive_ than _hyper-aware_. Compared to humans.”

“Uh huh. I’ll send you back with some stuff to keep it clean, so you can wipe it out if it starts getting ripe on you again. We’ll dispose of the padding here. But actually bandaging it up is…you know the word _contraindicated_?”

“Counter to the recommended form of treatment.”

She gives them a thumbs up and a smile, as if they are a precocious child. (They have met a few of those during relief assignments in the refuge camps; the modulation in tone their presence provoke in some of the humans in the unit was musical, charming.) “That’s the one. It is _contraindicated._ ”

The soldier scans her face for further information, but acquires nothing. “What _is_ indicated, then?”

She turns her back, reaches for the bottle of rubbing alcohol, opens a drawer, drops the bottle in. “How long have you been on deployment down here?”

They know the answer immediately. They have lost count only once, early on, when they were discorporated during the breach. “Five hundred and four Sabbaths.”

“You been in mixed units the whole time? Or working in the camps?”

“All but twelve Sabbaths of initial training.”

She turns back again, leans against the countertop and laces her fingers together. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. That’s a long time, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly. I’m–”

“Right, I know, you’re a billion or whatever. But deployment time is different, right? We’re real minute-to-minute here. And it’s a long time to be stuck in a construct.” She abruptly raps a knuckle against what would be their forehead.

They blink, involuntarily, but that behavior _is_ built into the construct, since retinas keyed to the visible spectrum are easy to damage and difficult to repair. Which, they suppose, was what she intended to demonstrate.

“That’s quite a stretch to be rubbing elbows with amoebas like yours truly.”

“Relatively speaking, yes. This is my longest deployment. This is _everybody’s_ longest deployment.”

She laughs, which is unexpected but pleasant. “Yeah, but not many of you have been in it long enough to parse that last sentence. You didn’t even have to think about it.”

The soldier still feels the echoing impact of her index finger. “Was that a…diagnostic? It was very colloquial, but–”

She ticks off her fingers. “It’s got one time frame reference, one metaphoric colloquialism, one perspective-taking metaphor, and one contextual turn of phrase. That’s four out of four. _And_ you just turned up with a _boo-boo_ from carrying your own armor. An _infected_ one.”

She stops, to allow them to guess at the implications.

Overintegration means they will be subject to discorporation, which is considered a form of discipline outside of combat. Their construct will be assigned to another soldier, and they will serve a long term of supremely monotonous discorporate labor. The other possibility is unmaking, which is considered absolutely nothing at all, as it represents the end of one’s ability to _consider_ anything. Or even to _be_ considered. A sense of unease permeates them – of course, unease itself is a form of emotive contraband.

 _Delightful_ , Sergeant Vallejo would say. _Fucking delightful._ He would be expressing the opposite of delight. Sergeant Vallejo is dead.

Death is different from being unmade. So much material, of every possible disposition, is left behind. They found that quite perplexing at first, and wondered if something had gone wrong in the process and if they should report it. After several dozen more exposures to the practice, they were able to categorize it as a kind of hybrid of discorporation and unmaking.

Which, frankly, makes even less sense. They understand why humans find it untenable at times.

“So,” the nurse says. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”

They meet her eyes, which are brown, and very moderately dilated.

“We’re going to double the weight load on your pauldrons. Volunteer to take on an artillery rig, swap out the pads with lead weights, whatever you can get a hold of easily.”

They look down at the discarded armor. “Won’t that aggravate the wound?”

There is a noise near the curtain; the electric crackle and ozone odor of some one imbued with a significant amount of authority. They recall that there is a seraph on-base today, reviewing the troops. This will be the security sweep.

The curtain is yanked aside, and a particularly inexpressive construct glares past them. Presence reaches out, rakes across the sterile chamber. Across the nurse, who stands as perfectly still as she is able to. Across them. Across their shoulder. ( _What would be their shoulder._ )

The construct closes the curtain again, and is gone.

The nurse releases the breath she has been holding. Embarrassingly, they find themselves doing the same.

“Look,” she says, in a lowered tone. “You’re not wounded.”

They open their mouth to object.

“You have _a wound_. But you are not wound- _ed._ Your construct _thinks_ it has been wounded.”

“My construct isn’t capable of independent thought.” Then they shift uneasily on the exam platform, as if to disprove their own point.

“I didn’t say it was independent. You directed it to incur a wound. In response to weight and friction. Then you directed it to acquire an infection from exposure to bacteria on the surface of the skin.”

“It should be invulnerable to wounds at this level. The construct and the armor are engineered for each others’ perfect use.”

“They are. But a _human_ shoulder would incur that wound. This is _exactly_ how the tissue would break down. Eventually you’d get injury to the joint, too, or some nerve impingement, some cervical compression. You’ve probably seen all of those things happen in your unit.” Then, even more quietly. “You’ve seen human bodies suffer all sorts of ways.”

She does not add: they have _imposed_ much of that suffering. Although it is inherent to their presence here.

The soldier’s voice takes on a sulky quality that they don’t recognize as their own. Maybe it’s from Corporal Wallace, who is also dead. “I don’t devote any particular attention to bodily injury. I certainly don’t _instruct_ my construct to _imitate_ it. That would be bizarre and irresponsible.”

She shrugs. “I’m not saying you’re doing it intentionally. Spend long enough crammed into one of these things, watching humans get blown out of theirs, it’s possible you just start…picking things up. I think there’s less air between acquiring social behaviors and acquiring biological ones than you all would like to admit. Maybe it’s a longterm stress reaction. Either way, I don’t know anybody who’s gonna fund _that_ research.”

She bonks the armor with the toe of her shoe, setting it to gentle rocking on the tile floor. “So load up. If you see your own construct continuously handling a payload that would flat-out crush a normal human shoulder, I think the abrasion will clear up on its own. Eventually.”

“I doubt that I’ll have the chance. This is a dangerous flaw. It’d be more efficient to disincorporate me.”

The nurse narrows her eyes at them. (What would be their own eyes are blue. They have never inquired if this is a random feature, or a purposeful one.) “I’m not reporting this.”

There is a long pause. “Why not?”

“Because it’s my medical judgment that it’s not necessary. When your medic bounced you to me, it became my call. I’ll just say it was the result of shrapnel from a discorporative weapon that picked up some human tissue on its way in. We’ll get you out of here and back to your unit by taps.”

She reaches out and hikes the sleeve of their grey undersuiting back up, covering the wound. They revisit _stinging,_ with a foray into _baffled staring_.

“Look, if you all had a policy of pulling grunts off the lines for some form of recuperation – or if they sent you topside and didn’t treat it like a prison sentence…I’d consider it. But I know they clip you down pretty tight so you can fit into these fancy monkey suits, and they don’t like sidelining the equipment while you catch your breath. Every time they yank one of you from service, or – the other thing – they lose somebody who actually knows how to work down here.”

“Somebody who’ll lose a battle because they’ve acquired _flinching_.”

“You’re waging this war on human land, with humans, often against humans. You think your commanding officer knows that a human carrying an heavy load on their shoulders will get sores? What happens when you march humans through cold mud for a month?”

“Their feet rot. It’s called trench foot.”

“Yeah, and it’s lost plenty of battles down here. Think the seraph knows that?”

They do not think it necessary, or wise, to respond.

“You can get up.”

The soldier slides reluctantly off of the examination table, boots clattering on the floor. They reach past the nurse for the pauldron, hefting it easily. (It weighs more than she does, in this environment.)

Take it in what would be their hands. Set it on what would be their shoulder. The nurse reaches up and wordlessly helps to adjust the fit, fastening the rear straps. She cinches them down with what Corporal Sheedy (dead) would call _extreme prejudice_.

“Did that hurt?” She asks.

They do their best to adopt a deadpan expression. “Apparently not.”

The nurse favors them with half of a smile, reaching for the curtain. “Okay, well.Do what I told you to. I’ll see you back here if it doesn’t clear up. Don’t bother with the garrison medic, just come straight to me. No need to make a big deal out of it.”

“If you say so,” the soldier responds. The nurse closes the curtain behind them.

They walk down the hallway, past the long rows of beds. Half of them are occupied with living humans and their bodies, both in various states of disrepair, waiting for the eternally belated services of the garrison medic. (Medics are never stationed in the mixed camps for long, they have noticed. It is not considered a glamorous assignment.)

Then out into the rich, noisome air of the camp. Voices and engines, diesel and soy broth. Sweat. The latrines. PFC Morris, who is currently alive, sees them and calls out their designation, jogs towards them with an eager expression. They smile, to the degree appropriate to their respective ranks.

The wound takes up an angry throb beneath their armor. It beats in time to a heart that they do not possess.


End file.
